


Immutable

by Kayim



Series: Immutable (Hawaii Five-0 AU) [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-02
Updated: 2011-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:56:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayim/pseuds/Kayim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Five-0 task force had been formed for one specific reason – to regulate, track down, and bring to justice criminals with psychic abilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immutable

_"The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's." -- William James_

The virus spread across mainland America early in 2009. While its first wave killed hundreds of thousands, it was its second wave that caused the long-term damage. Of those who had survived the initial illness, over a third of the remaining population discovered that they were endowed with psychic abilities. There were several broad categories that the abilities could be grouped into, but there were numerous variations, with the variations tending to follow familial lines.

In some cases, however, this didn't follow. And while Steve McGarrett had been affected, developing one of the rarer abilities, his father hadn't been affected at all, causing the already wide gulf between them to expand even further.

Diving into his newfound ability with the same enthusiasm he did with everything, Steve decided it was time to use his telepathy to reconnect with his family. Largely untrained, he forced a connection between his mind and his father's, not knowing what the consequences of such a connection could be. The moment his father was shot in the line of duty, Steve crumpled to the floor, pain flooding through his body as though the piece of metal had burst through his own skin. He swore, once he was able to breathe again, that he would never allow himself to bond telepathically with another person ever.

But he hadn't counted on meeting Danny Williams.

*

The Five-0 task force had been formed for one specific reason – to regulate, track down, and bring to justice, criminals with psychic abilities. While not the first group to be formed for this purpose, Five-0 was unique in its composition. Every member of the team was a Sensitive, each of them in a different way, working together in a way that no team of Normals could ever do.

Or at least this was how it was supposed to work.

In truth, there appeared to be significantly fewer law enforcement officers with abilities than many other careers – the creative arts were teeming with Empaths – and Steve McGarrett was the only current telepathic member. He did his best by himself, but when faced with a group of clairvoyant Sensitives who could read his every move before he had even considered it, his telepathy was very little help. He made it out of that fight with a few more scars and a little less bravado.

Danny Williams was a recent transfer from the New Jersey Police Department. Arriving in Hawaii only weeks before the virus hit, he swore it was typical of his luck that he was not only stuck in a pineapple-infested island in the middle of nowhere, but he was suddenly aware of every perverted thought that went through the minds of the criminals he was chasing. He hid his ability for as long as he could, both from his bosses and from his ex-wife, but when he heard the thoughts of a fellow officer, he felt compelled to reveal the truth. The result of his honesty was that his colleague was sacked pending a criminal investigation for bribery, and he was transferred to a new task force.

Both men were wary at first, their mental shields so high that they could barely get a read on each other. They kept their distance, neither willing to take that final all-trusting step that physical touch could bring, until the day things went drastically wrong.

*

The Honolulu Police Department provided them information on a low-level telekinetic who they had tracked to the outskirts of Kalaeloa. H.P.D. were either unable or unwilling to get any closer, and the case had been handed over to Five-0.

Steve and Danny found themselves face-to-face with a Sensitive who was a lot stronger than they had been informed – one who could fling either of them across the street without a second's hesitation. They stood at the open end of a filthy alleyway, blocking the man's only possible exit, their guns drawn and the light starting to fade.

 _So what's the plan, partner?_ he asked Steve, hoping that it was going to be something more detailed than "run and shoot". It had taken them a few weeks to become confident enough in each other that they were willing to lower their shields enough to talk like this. It was, after all, why they had been placed on the task force.

 _I could rush him,_ Steve suggested, his gaze firmly locked on the man in front of them.

 _Sure. Cause that's such a complex, detailed plan that nothing could possibly go awry._ He could feel the confusion coming from Steve, who honestly couldn't see anything wrong.

 _Or I could shoot him._

 _Don't even think about it, McGarrett._

 _I need to do something fast. If I don’t, this is going to end up with a lot of blood being spilled._

Danny looked at Steve, who had raised his shields to full once more, and wondered how the hell this was going to end. He didn't think it would be pretty, and suspected it would indeed end up with blood being spilled. It usually did. And it was usually his.

Before he could complain, a sudden _Geronimo_ echoed through his mind and Steve was hurtling at full speed directly towards the telekinetic.

Danny watched with a grim knowledge that, this time, Steve had finally taken on more than he could handle. Sure enough, as he ran, the suspect raised a hand and Steve slammed into an invisible brick wall with enough force that he actually bounced off it. As he stumbled backwards, Danny found himself rooted to the spot with another wave of the suspect's hand, unable to do anything but watch as Steve collapsed to the floor, unmoving.

He wanted to rush to his partner's side, and fought against the unseen force that was keeping him immobile. As he pushed, he saw the suspect stagger slightly. He pushed harder, with the determination of a man unwilling to watch a friend die in front of him, and managed to break himself free. As he rushed towards his fallen partner, he was barely aware of the suspect running past him. Despite the shields that both he and Steve had kept raised, he suddenly realized that there had been an underlying noise whenever Steve was nearby. It was almost like a buzz in the back of his mind, annoying at first and eventually comforting and reassuring.

And now that noise, that feeling of Steve was gone. The space that was usually filled with Steve's jibes about his ties was suddenly a dark hole and the lack of sound in his mind scared him more than he was ready to admit.

He fell to his knees beside Steve, calling his name, both out loud and inside his head, praying for some kind of answer to either. Ignoring the screaming pain from his knee as it hit the asphalt, he tugged Steve towards him until he had Steve's head cradled in his lap. There were no signs of blood or obvious physical injury, so he carried on pushing against the telepathic link, pushing as hard as he could, desperate for some sort of reaction.

As he pushed, he felt a flash of a memory inside his mind and felt the pain of his father dying, alone and scared. This wasn't his own memory – he knew that his father was alive and well in New Jersey – and he clung to the recollection, as painful as it was, knowing that this one thought had been strong enough to keep Steve alive.

 

*

Danny hadn't even known he had blacked out until he woke up in the darkness of the alleyway. The sun had finally set, leaving just the distant artificial light of the streetlamps.

Pain engulfed him, spreading from his head down to his toes. His hands gripped at the sides of his head, expecting to feel blood pouring from it, and he was shocked when he felt nothing but the familiar softness of his hair.

It wasn't until he heard a moan from Steve, who was laying flat on his back next to him, that he remembered that it wasn't him who had been slammed into the invisible wall. Before he could dwell on that thought, he felt Steve moving.

 _Gotta get up._ Steve's thoughts invaded Danny's own mind. _Have to stop him getting away. Keep moving. Don't give up. Get up. Protect Danny. Move it._

 _He's gone,_ Danny told him, trying to concentrate enough to bring his shields back up. With practice, he was able to keep them solid throughout most things, but whatever had hit them wasn't something he'd been prepared for. He didn't need to be listening to Steve's super-SEAL inner monologue as well as dealing with the pain from where he'd been hurt.

Where Steve had been hurt, he corrected himself.

He tried to stand up, kneeling on the damp ground. The pain in his knee flared up but it was something he was familiar, and he used the pain to strengthen himself. It wasn't until he noticed Steve clutching at his own knee that he realized what had happened.

Neither of them knew whose thought it was first, perhaps it occurred to both of them separately, but they both heard the realization as clearly as if it was their own.

They'd Bonded.

*

Bonding was an extremely rare occurrence. Only a tiny percentage of people were discovered to be carrying the gene that caused Bonding. It had always lain dormant in the human DNA, until the abilities developed.

It took a series of wild coincidences, but very occasionally, two people who were both carriers and both shared a near-identical psychic ability could experience a Bonding. There had been less than a hundred documented cases in the United States of America, usually between Telekinetics, for some reason.

Neither Steve or Danny had expected that it could happen to them. After all, they were both Telepaths, and it was common knowledge that 'Paths couldn't Bond...

*

Steve woke up to thoughts of his daughter on Christmas morning. It was too much effort to open his eyes, so he kept them closed as he remembered the way her face had lit up when he produced the Barbie doll she had been angling for, and the strawberry scented shampoo that she always insisted on using. He heard the little snort she gave when she started laughing at his Runway Model Barbie impression, and felt the way her arms wrapped around his neck as she threw herself at him, proclaiming loudly that he was the greatest Danno in the whole world.

Danno.

With a start, he opened his eyes and saw a plain white room that reminded him of the one he'd been confined to the last time he'd busted up his knee. Damn hospitals.

 _My knee, not yours._ Danny's thoughts sounded in his head as clearly as his own. He looked over and saw his partner laying in the bed next to his, sheets pulled up to his waist, pale blue hospital gown covering him.

Steve automatically tried to raise his shields, embarrassed that he'd been caught with them down.

 _Not going to work,_ Danny told him. _You know what's happened. No more shields. Oh, lucky me._

Bonded. Neither one of them was able to hide a single thought from the other anymore. Never allowed secrets. Never able to travel more than a few meters from each other. Steve squeezed his eyes closed and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyelids.

 _Oh yeah, 'cos that's going to help._

 _Stop doing that._

 _I'm not exactly doing this for my own pleasure._

 _It's your fault._

Danny sat up in his bed. "My fault?" he said out loud. "My fault that you were idiotic enough to rush over to a lunatic who decided to slam you against a solid brick wall. Which, by the way, hurts like hell, thank you very much."

At the reminder, Steve opened his eyes and glanced over at his partner. Crap.

"You'll notice how much you're not hurting," Danny continued his rant, sitting himself up in the bed, his hands already beginning their usual activity. "There's a good reason for that. The Bonding. Remember. The thing that means from now on, I'm going to be subjected to intense pain whenever you rush off and get into some kind of trouble."

 _Oh hang on,_ he added, sending a mental recollection of his last injury across the telepathic link they shared. _I already do._

Steve couldn't help laughing, but he felt instantly guilty when Danny insisted on thinking about every time he'd been injured in the line of duty. Every time he'd been thrown against a wall, or hit by a telekinetically flung object. While Steve could tell that Danny didn't hold any real grudges against him for any of it, he did notice a small thread of blame hiding deeply underneath the mock anger.

As soon as he felt the blame, he felt sick to his stomach. He could feel every shard of pain that Danny had experienced since they began working together, and felt his own guilt rise up.

 _Oh stop feeling so guilty. I don't blame you that much._

Steve looked at him. _Yes. You do. Hell,_ I _blame me._

Before Danny could answer verbally – Steve could already hear a myriad of accusations and insinuations passing through Danny's mind – they were interrupted by the arrival of Chin Ho and Kono.

The cousins had been working as partners within Five-0 for a few months, their abilities complementing each other remarkably well. While Kono's particular form of psychokinesis allowed her to manipulate water and other liquids, Chin's had control over various forms of metal. Between the two of them, there was little that stood in their way.

"Hey boss, how you feeling?" Kono sat herself on the edge of Steve's bed while Chin hovered in the doorway.

"Fine." Both Steve and Danny answered at the same time, glaring at each other, their earlier conversation still replaying in both of their minds.

A look passed between Kono and Chin.

"What was that?" Danny demanded, his finger pointing accusingly between them. "That look. There. Between you. What was it?"

"Nothing, Danny," Chin assured him. "We were just talking about these new… um… developments in the team dynamics."

"You know, then?" Steve waited for one of them to explain how they knew.

 _Leave it,_ Danny told him. _They would have found out sooner or later anyway. It's not like we were going to be able to keep this a secret for long._

 _It would have been nice to have a chance to work it out ourselves first though._

 _Aww, how sweet. You wanted some us time._ Danny felt Steve's indignation clearly across the link, but somewhere, layered deep underneath he heard something else that caused him to catch his breath.

"Maybe we'll come back later." Chin was already backing out of the door, glaring at Kono to make sure she was following suit.

"Yeah, you do that," Danny murmured, his eyes locked firmly on his partner. Steve had turned over in the bed, his back to Danny, as if not looking at him could somehow contradict what he'd just revealed.

 _If you weren't so damn obstinate, you'd have heard my response._

 _You mean the laughing?_ Even in his thoughts, Danny was sure that Steve was pouting.

 _You really don't have this telepathy thing very well under control, do you?_ When Danny's abilities had become active, he’d spent as much time around other people as he could, determined to push himself to the limits, not wanting to get caught out by them. He had a flash of a memory, of himself taking off in his car, to the most remote place he could find, and camping out for months there.

 _Except that's not my memory, Steven, is it?_

Steve didn't respond, not directly, but Danny felt the complicated waves of emotion that flooded through Steve's mind, with memories of his father shining brightly at the forefront.

 _We can control this. Trust me._

This time the feelings that Danny picked up from Steve were more confusing. He caught glimpses of the trust that he had hoped for, mixed in with fear, but he pushed back, digging deeper. There was something else there, something else that Steve probably wasn't even sure he was projecting.

There. Deep inside the compartmentalized part of Steve McGarrett's brain was a small locked box that he was trying his best to keep hidden. From himself, as well as from the rest of the world.

 _Trust me,_ Danny repeated, allowing his own feelings to fill Steve's mind. He showed Steve his memory of the first time they met, let him feel how irritated he made him. He pushed, flooding them both with the highlights of their time together, until he realized that he was seeing some of those memories through Steve's eyes. This was what Steve had kept locked in that box inside his mind.

Danny's breath hitched as he saw himself how Steve saw him. He saw his own blue eyes and watched them burn with an intensity that people had told him about but he had never believed in until now. In exchange, he offered Steve his own recollections, allowing him to feel his breath being stolen away at the sight of him walking into a room, smiling brightly.

 _Trust me._ This time it was Steve's thought pushing back, and Danny finally opened his eyes to see Steve standing over him, his eyes hungry.

A thousand thoughts rushed back and forth between them, arguments for why this was wrong, confessions about how badly they wanted this. Neither one knew whose thoughts were whose any more.

Steve brought his hand down to Danny's face, resting lightly against his cheek. Danny could feel the warmth of a hand against the roughness of a stubbled cheek, but he lost track of whose hand and whose cheek. As lips touched lips, his hand reached up to grip the back of Steve's head. He felt his own fingers twisting into Steve's hair, simultaneously feeling the way that his fingers felt to Steve. Every touch was intensified, doubled, the sensations being felt by both of them.

It was literally taking their breath away.

 _Want. Need._ The initial thought had come from Steve, but was felt by them both. At some point, Steve had lowered himself onto Danny's bed, laying alongside him. They were stretched out, their bodies fitting perfectly together, with the only thing coming between them being the thin material of the hospital gowns.

 _Not here. Home._ By a silent consensus, home was automatically Steve's place. The bond meant that they couldn't be too far from each other any more, but Danny's suggestion was subdued, as though he wanted Steve to contradict him, tell him that they didn't need to wait.

He cursed across their link when Steve pulled himself away. _Oh great. So now you decide to listen to me._ He was breathing heavily, they both were, and felt more desperate than he had ever done in his life. He wanted nothing more than to feel the touch of Steve’s hands on him, to feel the smooth skin under his own hands. He wanted to taste the tattoos that spiraled along Steve's arms. He wanted to know how it would feel to have Steve inside him, to be inside him.

 _Oh god._ Steve felt Danny's urge as though it was his own. It _was_ his own, he realized with a shock. He wanted to grip Danny's arms tightly, pressing him against the wall. He wanted to get down on his knees and hear Danny's thoughts as he came.

"Nurse!" Danny voice cracked as he shouted. He mentally nudged Steve back to his own bed, feeling a moment of pain as the physical contact between them was broken.

The nurse came in a minute later, long enough for both men to have covered themselves up under the starched white sheets. They were both flushed and breathing heavily, trying not to look each other in the eye.

"We're discharging ourselves," Steve told her as she reached over and placed her fingers on his wrist. She hesitated, looking down at her charts, so he turned his hand around, holding hers tightly in his. "We're Five-0," he explained, hoping the words were enough to pre-empt the inevitable argument. "And we need to go home."


End file.
